How can this city possibly have 50m commute time?

[Simcity_4U 0]

 

 

 

does not compute.... I'm clueless here..

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

The commute time graph is bugged--it doesn't work.

[lbherrick 1]

your probably don't have enough jobs. You have some high rise residential but your commercial is all low density and small. Zone more high density and make sure you have jobs available for each wealth class 

[z1 566]

If you're not using the NAM, as you apparently aren't, the game takes the real commute time and multiplies it by 25.  So you've actually got a commute time of two minutes.  Normally, even that is too high for a city of that size.  But you've got a lot of buildings where the Sims can't find jobs, which skews the commute time way upward.

 

And to top it all off, as Indiana Joe mentioned, the commute time graph is broken.  In your situation, it's giving reasonably accurate results, although you need to know how to read them, and you see that they're not really useful anyway.  But in a city of any decent size with mass transit, especially one that's connected to other cities, its results are essentially meaningless.

[Simcity_4U 0]

If you're not using the NAM, as you apparently aren't, the game takes the real commute time and multiplies it by 25.  So you've actually got a commute time of two minutes.  Normally, even that is too high for a city of that size.  But you've got a lot of buildings where the Sims can't find jobs, which skews the commute time way upward.

 

And to top it all off, as Indiana Joe mentioned, the commute time graph is broken.  In your situation, it's giving reasonably accurate results, although you need to know how to read them, and you see that they're not really useful anyway.  But in a city of any decent size with mass transit, especially one that's connected to other cities, its results are essentially meaningless.

I have NAM, I'm on a mac and dragged the 1-6.dat NAM files to my plugins folder...

[z1 566]

I have NAM, I'm on a mac and dragged the 1-6.dat NAM files to my plugins folder...

 

That's just a small piece of the NAM, containing only a few features.  Most notably, these files do not contain the NAM traffic simulator, whose absence I was noting.  Please see on which files you need for the traffic simulator.

[Shortsonfire 67]

I have NAM, I'm on a mac and dragged the 1-6.dat NAM files to my plugins folder...

I'm on a Mac too. Dragging the nam files don't really give you the best results. I dragged them on to my Mac as well, and found many problems. Your best bet is to find a PC (friends or public) and run the installer into an external plugins folder, them drop it onto a thumb drive and then put it on your Mac. I had several problems with NAM31 from just dragging it, but the real installation helped.

It especially helped with the traffic simulators and stuff.

[z1 566]

Your best bet is to find a PC (friends or public) and run the installer into an external plugins folder, them drop it onto a thumb drive and then put it on your Mac.

 

Yes, this method is the official recommendation of the NAM Team.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I don't suppose the team could find someone with a MAC to make an installer?  Can't be any worse than making the present one.  Portability isn't all that hard, you know.  I run the TSCT (Java) in my machine as a native process.  The JRE is quite well ported from machine to machine.

[docj101 99]

And to top it all off, as Indiana Joe mentioned, the commute time graph is broken.  In your situation, it's giving reasonably accurate results, although you need to know how to read them, and you see that they're not really useful anyway.  But in a city of any decent size with mass transit, especially one that's connected to other cities, its results are essentially meaningless.

 

To emphasize the point these guys are making about the 'actual number' being meaningless:  I run a city of ~1million sims, and I exaggerated this inconsistency with a very custom traffic sim.  My average commute time is ~1600 minutes on the graph.  We don't need to discuss why, as I already understand how I caused this myself.  My point is, my city doesn't have a single "no job zot" or abandoned building due to high commute times.  The whole city 'queries' as low or medium commute times when checking buildings.  The number in the graph really doesn't apply to me at all anymore.

 

That being said, it is good to use the graph to get a general idea if commute time has been increasing or decreasing.  You can see if improvements you have made cause the commute time line to trend up or down over short or long periods of time.  Drastic changes like a bulldozed or new bridge can result in a big step up or down in the graph line.  Just consider commute times acceptable if your buildings don't  go abandoned.  Worry about lowering commute times when the need arises due to inevitable abandonment issues you'll encounter due to population and traffic increases. 

 

In the case of your original post, your problem is simple lack of jobs.  I see in the picture you need much more zoned commerce and industry to supply those apartment buildings. 

[z1 566]

 

That being said, it is good to use the graph to get a general idea if commute time has been increasing or decreasing.

 

For a long time, this was the conventional wisdom about the commute time graph.  Unfortunately, it's not true.  Many years ago, Tropod found that adding mass transit to the vanilla game action increased the overall commute time when it should have decreased it.  As one of the founders of the NAM Team, he was probably the first serious player to flat out say "Ignore it" when referring to the commute time graph.

 

Another serious problem is that commute time increase not only in proportion to the length of the average commute, but also in proportion to the number of commuters you have traveling to neighboring cities, and also to your city.  It has nothing to do with how far they're going; just crossing the city line bumps up the average commute time.  So for example, your average commute time of 1600 minutes tells me that you have a lot of Sims commuting to other cities, as that's the only way I know of getting such a huge commute time.  So at that level, the commute time graph simply measures the amount of intercity traffic, and it will fluctuate up and down as that amount fluctuates.  These fluctuations have nothing to do with any changes in commute time.

 

If you have a single, isolated city with no neighbor connections, then the commute time graph can give you some valid information.  But even then, it's not particularly useful for playing the game, especially if you have the NAM installed.  So I recommend taking Tropod's advice about the commute time graph when he says, "Ignore it."  The Traffic Data Views and the Route Query Tool are far more useful in seeing if you have healthy traffic patterns.

[docj101 99]

 

That being said, it is good to use the graph to get a general idea if commute time has been increasing or decreasing.

 

For a long time, this was the conventional wisdom about the commute time graph.  Unfortunately, it's not true.  Many years ago, Tropod found that adding mass transit to the vanilla game action increased the overall commute time when it should have decreased it.  As one of the founders of the NAM Team, he was probably the first serious player to flat out say "Ignore it" when referring to the commute time graph.

 

Another serious problem is that commute time increase not only in proportion to the length of the average commute, but also in proportion to the number of commuters you have traveling to neighboring cities, and also to your city.  It has nothing to do with how far they're going; just crossing the city line bumps up the average commute time.  So for example, your average commute time of 1600 minutes tells me that you have a lot of Sims commuting to other cities, as that's the only way I know of getting such a huge commute time.  So at that level, the commute time graph simply measures the amount of intercity traffic, and it will fluctuate up and down as that amount fluctuates.  These fluctuations have nothing to do with any changes in commute time.

 

If you have a single, isolated city with no neighbor connections, then the commute time graph can give you some valid information.  But even then, it's not particularly useful for playing the game, especially if you have the NAM installed.  So I recommend taking Tropod's advice about the commute time graph when he says, "Ignore it."  The Traffic Data Views and the Route Query Tool are far more useful in seeing if you have healthy traffic patterns.

 

Yeah, but I'm not talking about the fluctuations, they come and go in patterns.  I'm saying longer term trends can be observed (on the larger time scales) assuming you haven't changed anything in terms of mass transit or transportation.  If your city is just rolling along and your in there planting trees and whatnot for years, you can refer to the graph and it would reflect how the in-place transit system has been performing as population may have risen, or demographics changed.  Or, like you mention adding a mass transit system falsely increases the commute graph line, I'm just saying looking at the graph on a longer time-line you can see the year you added it because of the increase it caused.  I hope I'm expressing what I mean to say here.  I'm not saying it's information is accurate, I'm saying there is information you can deduce from it if you watch it and apply other things you already know. 

 

 And of course using all tools at your disposal to decypher your traffic data is important.